Update 5-20-14

 

Hi,

 

First, a note from Liz King-Giordano at South:  The awards committee has chosen the following 2014 recipients:

        The Booker Gibson Scholarship:  Dawn Lupeke

        The Vince Tampio Scholarship:   Jonathan Persaud

 

[Rich -- I've sent Liz the checks, and because Linda Tobin Kettering won't be available to present the awards this year, after terrifically doing that for the past 8 years, Liz will arrange for presenters.  I'm hoping the music and theater teachers can announce the awards, since they know their students well.

    Again, thanks, Linda and Liz.]

 

Next, some advice from Larry Rugen about saving money at the Hauppauge hotel:  If you've never had a Hyatt credit card, you can apply for a Chase Hyatt credit card with a 2-night free room bonus.  Of course, there are limits attached.  You must spent $1000 in first 3 months of having the card, and after the first year free, the card costs $79 annually if you keep it.  Read the offer details carefully before you apply.

 

[Rich -- I read the details and chose to skip this at the moment because I'm not sure how canceling a credit card after a year affects a person's credit rating.  But I did make my hotel reservations, and with a AAA discount and a base rate of $143 a night, the total with taxes and fees was $162/night.  Again, I don't know how long this rate will hold.]

 

Related, from Gary Davis:  I will probably come to the reunion with my spouse.

 

Unrelated, from Mary Sipp-Green:  I have a little big news to pass on.  This autumn, a monograph of my paintings is being published by the Artist Book Foundation.  It's titled "Every Hour of the Light," a quote from a Walt Whitman poem called "Miracles."  The book will be hard cover, 11" x 11 1/2", 160 pages, with 85 paintings reproduced in color.  The release date is Fall 2014, with advance copies available at my opening at the Granary Gallery in Martha's Vineyard on August 3rd.  The book will continue to be sold there throughout the month.  10% of the print run will be distributed to underserved libraries in America, and the rest sold in book stores, online, and in museum shops, etc. throughout the world.  The book consists mostly of landscapes, and it's like a retrospective of my work done over 35 years.

 

    Previously, Mary also noted:  This is a real deal art book which has been a lot more work then I ever imagined.  That's because I had to do all the back matter -- bibliography, chronology, exhibition history, acknowledgments, and so on.  This is the kind of job I'm really not cut out for.  I complain constantly and am surprised my friends and family still take my calls.  Still, the truth is, it's very exciting and also surreal.

 

[Rich -- Congratulations, of course.  I'm looking forward to buying the book.  For many years, my partner's had a postcard of one of Mary's paintings propped on his desk.]

 

A couple of interesting links:

    First, from Jerry Bittman:  Another Time and Place -- the 1950s:  youtube . com/watch?v=jjj9VKKSV2g   (please remove the spaces)

    Second, from one of my former college teachers:  Amazing Color Photos of early 1900's Russia:  dailymail . co . uk/news/article-2572671/Photos-vault-Amazing-colour-images-pre-revolutionary-Russia.html  

 

A bit of the Long Island Herald article that was mentioned last week, about Amy Kassak Bentley:

    Bentley’s video went through several revisions.  Her first version had many more family photos than her final product.  Bentley belongs to several Facebook groups where people share their memories and photos of Valley Stream.  She shared her original video there and received a lot of feedback, including suggestions for photos that should be included.  “I took all their comments and criticisms to heart and looked at it carefully,” she said.  Her “de facto” editors from Facebook were a big help, as this was Bentley’s first foray into creating a project of this magnitude.  The final images in her video came from a wide variety of sources.  Many were photos she took when growing up in Valley Stream.  Others she took during her recent visits there.  Bentley said it was important to document how the community has changed over the years.  She also used images from the 50th anniversary book, aerial shots, postcards, artwork, newspaper clippings and photos provided to her by others.  During her trips to Valley Stream, she would stop at the Waldinger Library and go through old high school yearbooks.  All of her sources are credited at the end of the 11-minute video.

    Again, the link to the whole article is:  liherald . com/valleystream/stories/Documenting-Valley-Stream-through-pictures,54844#.U2zXgb2DGaw.email   (remove the spaces)

 

A bit of topical cultural news:  On Tuesday, May 27th, the Baruch Performing Arts Center will present a concert of a classic Yiddish Operetta -- “Di Goldene Kale” (The Golden Bride) -- not heard in New York in over 70 years.  Once a staple of 2nd Avenue repertoires, the opera fell into obscurity, but the Yiddish-American theater of the 1920s served to help Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make meaning of their lives as strangers in this new land.  Like many newcomers to America, they faced homesickness, deprivation, and language difficulty.  The Yiddish musical helped them come to terms with their environment by reminding them of the “old home” while highlighting the benefits of the New World.

 

Finally, part of a New York Times obituary of someone who warped a lot of our young senses of humor:

    Al Feldstein, who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Mad in 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire, died at his ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana.  He was 88.

    Mr. Feldstein had been a writer and illustrator of comic books when he became editor of Mad four years into its life and just a year after it had graduated from comic-book form to a full-fledged magazine.  The founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman, established its well-informed irreverence, but Mr. Feldstein gave Mad its identity as a smart-alecky, sniggering, and indisputably clever spitball-shooter of a publication with a scattershot look, dominated by gifted cartoonists of wildly differing styles.

    Sources disagree about Mad’s circulation when Mr. Feldstein took over; estimates range from 325,000 to 750,000.  But by the early 1960s, he increased it to over a million, and a decade later it had doubled.

He hired many of the writers and artists whose work became Mad trademarks.  Among them were Don Martin, whose cartoons featured bizarre human figures and distinctive sound effects -- Katoong! Sklortch! Zazik!; Antonio Prohias, whose “Spy vs. Spy” was a sendup of the international politics of the Cold War; Dave Berg, whose “The Lighter Side of ...” made gentle fun of middlebrow behavior; and Mort Drucker, whose caricatures satirized movies.

    In his second issue, Mr. Feldstein seized on a character who had appeared only marginally in the magazine -- a freckled, gaptoothed, big-eared, glazed-looking young man -- and put his image on the cover, identifying him as a write-in candidate for president campaigning under the slogan “What -- me worry?”

At first he went by Mel Haney, Melvin Cowznofski, and other names.  But when the December 1956 issue identified him as Alfred E. Neuman, the name stuck.  He became the magazine’s perennial cover boy.

 

The class of '64 reunion:  Friday, October 10, 2014, 6 to 11 PM.  $70 per person, cash bar.  Hyatt Regency, Hauppague, New York.  Committee phone numbers:  Tom McPartland  570-223-2577.  Ken Silver: 631-463-2217.  Bette Silver: 631-463-2216.

 

The class of '65  50th Reunion:  April 24 through April 26, 2015, Hyatt Regency, Hauppauge. 

 

The South '65 e-mail addresses: reunionclass65 . blogspot . com  (remove the spaces)

 

The South '65 photo site: picasaweb . google . com/SouthHS65    (ditto)

 

 

Rich